- Hello everyone. Hope you guys are having a great week in the Lord. Let's take a moment to pray as we jump into our text for tonight. Our God, we thank you so much for your grace. Lord, we're truly grateful that God in this life where we are besieged with attacks, distractions, where we have weaknesses within ourselves, where we also have our enemy trying to deceive us and attack us.

We thank you so much God that you grant to us so much in Christ. God that you grant to us his power and strength, but also Father God, the light of your word and a ministry of your Holy Spirit. We're also so thankful for the church that God in fellowship together, we can in many ways bind together, staying strong, standing firm against all the tide of the generations.

So God through our study tonight, would you continue to build us up? God that we would be strong in you. We thank you it's in Christ name we pray, amen. Okay. Well, as we continue on the study of the book of Ephesians, as you recall, we are in a section where we are talking about applications of everything that we've been learning.

And if you think about it, in this section so far, we've talked about like family relationships, submission to each other, the character, but here and now in this section, we're talking about standing firm in the Lord, being strong. And there's so much terminology that's related to a fight, okay?

Let's take a look through the passage and for the sake of getting the whole paragraph, I'm going to read to us the entire section. It says, "Finally be strong in the Lord and the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day.

And having done everything to stand firm, stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. In addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one.

And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. With all prayer and petition, pray at all times in the spirit. And with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints. And pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known the boldness of the mystery of the gospel.

For which I am an ambassador in chains, that in proclaiming it, I may speak boldly as I ought to speak." Now, jumping right into the passage, there is a strong exhortation for us, strong exhortation for us to be strong. He says, "Finally be strong in the Lord." And whenever the command is given, there are sometimes commands that are a little bit more complicated.

And then there are commands that is just straightforward. You need to be strong. But I think sometimes we kind of, because it's so straightforward, we glance over and then move on. But it's important for you to ask, do I understand the kind of strength he wants me to have?

Do I have a picture of the kind of fortitude, right? That God wants us to exhibit in this life. And the idea here, the expectation for you is to have all kinds of strengths. Take a look at all the various ways that God has described the strength you need in this, I guess you can say last hour or the evil day or the time to come, the struggle that we're engaged in now.

He talked about standing firm. So you should be able to resist, right? You should be able to hold your ground, so to speak. You shouldn't be a pushover. It talks about the struggle. Like you're supposed to be engaged in a kind of a combative struggle, a fight that is both defensive and offensive.

When you look at the various pieces of the army, you'll notice that there are multiple elements to this. He talks about a kind of strength that's full. He talks about, again, being able to resist and to stand firm. So when you take a look at all this, I mean, the emphasis is very clear.

God wants you as an individual in Christ to be very strong. Another passage I wanna turn to just by way of a cross-reference, as Apostle Paul says, "As a prayer for the church and every Christian," he says in Philippians, "This I pray that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ, having been filled with the fruit of righteousness, which comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God." Now, this prayer doesn't include things like military battle strength, being prepared in that kind of fashion, but it talks about you growing all the way up to the end, having sincerity and blamelessness and righteousness, and so when I ask the question again, do you understand what it means to be strong, right?

I hope you're not thinking just like, "Ugh," that kind of strong, but obviously there's a strength here that Apostle Paul is praying for. Can you use your love and your mind to discern what is pleasing to God, what is excellent in His eyes? Can you approve of what is true and godly, and can you be so clear that you're sincere and blameless all the way through?

So again, contributing to the idea of what does it mean to be strong. Now, this passage describes to us even more of what it means to be strong by describing the context and the means by which you're supposed to be strong, which is both in the Lord and in the strength of His might.

Now, we can talk so much about in the Lord and the strength of His might, but you guys remember the chapters one through three. It was through His exhibition of His love and His might that He accomplished redemption. Through the power that is in Christ, He is changing and transforming you, right?

But within all this, one of the highlights that I would like to say is there is clearly a concept of dependency, okay? Clearly a concept of dependency. I think I'd like to take a moment to just meditate on this a little bit. I think in our day, I think that in meditation upon this idea of strength, that right now there is this kind of sentiment and talk that maybe is a little too accustomed to failure.

And what I mean by that is sometimes when I even look up people talking about leadership or what is the regular Christian experience, they almost talk as though it's like, yeah, we all know what it means to fail again and again and again. And as a leader, you're not like way up there telling all the people, come on, come on.

You're pretty much failing with other people and just encouraging them, let's just keep going, right? Well, clearly the expectation for you is not, you know, you're going to fail all the time, but so long as you're in the Lord, it's okay. Like that is not necessarily the picture that this passage depicts.

The passage depicts you standing your ground in the Lord, depending on Him. The other extreme error is for you to think that by stacking up as much Bible knowledge as you can, you're going to be so strong that you don't need to daily rely on the Lord. That somehow, or even on a daily level, that because you did your devotion in the morning, that through the day, you don't need to rely on Him.

That would be another misconception, right? There is this idea here, you're supposed to abide in Christ and Christ has already told us, by yourself, completely lost. By yourself, incapable. By yourself, nothing is possible. But in the Lord, all is possible, right? So the question here is, do you understand this expectation for you?

Like what it means to be strong in the Lord for you in your day, okay? Next, point two. He says, in relation to you being strong, what you need to do, this is so instructional, is you need to put on the full armor of God, okay? Put on the full armor of God.

Now, we're going to talk about all the different pieces later. And again, such a straightforward command, right? We don't need to sit here and say, what it means to put on is, right? You need to make sure you're grabbing every single piece that you can and put on the full armor of the Lord.

What's interesting though, is that passage, it highlights this idea of putting on the armor of God, but it pauses to give you the motivation. The motivation is so that you, you as a child of God, you as a Christian, you will be able to stand firm, okay? Now, I want you guys to think about this a little bit.

There is this like exhortation and there is this motivation given to you. Like, you're going to be able to do this and that kind of stuff. So I totally imagine right now, there's in this passage already a sentiment of the soldier. And so I imagine the drill inspector saying, you need to get ready, you know?

And I'll tell you honestly, recently I've been researching a lot about like home defense with all the stuff going on, but also, you know, I see the news and sometimes there are some things like happening close to my home. My wife and I have been watching like preparedness and readiness.

Do we know an escape plan? Step one, like, do you know like, what are the vulnerable portions of your house? I just want to warn you, don't get too caught up into some of those videos because man, paranoia is like through the roof, okay? But I got to tell you something, in a desire to get ready, I bought Bia or I asked Bia to order on Amazon some pepper spray, one pepper spray, one for her, one for me, okay?

So we feel a little bit more ready for danger because we can spray somebody in the eye. Now, the thing about it is there's all these videos and there was, I came across a guy, I'm not going to name him, it's a pretty interesting YouTube channel. And he said he is so in love with ready and preparedness that he decked out his home and his car.

And because I like cars and stuff, I was like, ooh, that's interesting. I looked it up and in his car, he had three pistols, one AR rifle, four gloves, a rain jacket that has easy access to his pistols. He had specialty umbrellas, tactical flashlights. He had an ankle first aid kit, an ankle handcuff kit.

He had a large first aid kit. He had extra magazines and different doorwells of his car. Underneath his kids, he had a kid's car seat. Underneath, he had extra magazines. And then at a certain moment, he kind of paused like, hey, chill out, man. I don't got no more room, okay?

And then he started going off about how prepared and ready he was. He had a backpack in case he needed to go off into the woods that he would survive for three days. And he's going around his car showing how ready and prepared he is. And I thought that was pretty hilarious.

Now, that kind of made me think about it a little bit. I laugh at him because, man, at some point, I mean, are you really gonna stick a rifle underneath your kid's car seat? Are you really gonna stick just magazines of bullets and ammunition all over your vehicle? And the reason why that looks kind of silly is because, why does that look silly, right?

Just take a moment to think about that. Before I give the answer, take a moment to think about why is that silly when a man drives around with essentially a fortified truck? The reason why is 'cause it may or may not happen. Yeah? It's kind of like, don't you get annoyed when those people, right, who are like, "Oh, no, I need to take a light sweater, "a thick sweater, whatever it may be, "and just come on, we're just going out.

"It's not gonna rain, right? "It's not gonna be this, and it's not gonna be that." I mean, God willing, yeah, I hope I never have to use my pepper spray. So in my mind, it's like having a little bottle sitting on the side of this or that or on my key chain.

That's no big deal to me, so I don't look like a fool. But imagine the guy who has the tactical hat. He's got tactical glasses, tactical gloves, and he's walking around like he's ready for war, and you're just laughing, like, "Come on, man. "That's not gonna happen in your day." I mean, what are the chances?

You're probably gonna get hit by your truck before anything else happens. Okay, but flip that around. If it was certain that something would happen, you would look like the fool, right? How many times have you said you've gone out, and you're just like blazing hot right now. You go swimming, and you think in your mind, like, "I should probably put some sunblock on," right?

But then you think in your mind, "Ah, I'm only gonna be out there for 30 minutes. "It's not gonna burn." Who's the fool now, right? Like, you come back like, "Ah, I should've put "the sunblock on." You know it's gonna happen. You know already it's super hot. You know you're pale-skinned.

You know you're gonna burn. But you go out there without your sunblock. Who's the fool now? Okay, why do I bring that up? It's because God is telling you to put on every single piece of the armor. And yes, it may look foolish. I mean, didn't it look foolish for the people to jump into a boat when there was no water?

Didn't it look foolish to people to carry around the Ark of the Covenant, a big old box? Didn't it look foolish to walk around the city? Everything that God is sometimes asking us to do looks a little foolish. For us to invest all this kind of time when you have your own studies to do, to invest all this kind of man hours and your brain power and all this kind of stuff for services, for prayer, all this kind of stuff when you're already busy, when you're already tired with your family responsibilities.

There is a foolishness when the world looks at us like why are you investing in all that? Don't you know you'd be a lot more comfortable if you didn't have all this gear on you? Not walking around with antiquated stuff over your feet and big old belts and breastplates.

Like who wears that now? Okay, you see what I'm saying? But who's the fool? When God has already told us, this is a guarantee. Anybody who desires to live a godly life will be persecuted. Who's the fool when God has already told you there is an enemy prowling around looking for you when you're not ready?

There are enemies, there are forces attacking you. And for you to think it's not gonna happen, lost, already lost. That's what I'm talking about right here. As I meditated upon this idea of put on the full armor of God and he's trying to reason with you. It's probably because we're sitting here like do we really need that though?

Do I really need to be ready with all those pieces? Won't I look silly? But then he says, yes, the devil is scheming. The devil is going to attack you and you're the one who needs to be able to discern to either say, no, that is of satanic force, that is of darkness or prove yes, this is of God.

And you can't sit there and be like, but wait a minute, God, aren't you gonna protect me? Aren't you almighty? Aren't you sovereign? I thought you were gonna protect me. God has already told you, I have given you every resource in Christ. I have given you the word of God.

I've given you the spirit. I've given you the church. I've given all that is necessary for our life and godliness, but you must be strong. God is not going to do for you what he deemed as already good for his children for you to do. And so this is a strong exhortation and part of me as I'm meditating, I was like, man, just my own resistance to not want to do some things, you know, realizing even if let's say I had no like rebellious part of me, God, if I came to you thinking like, do I really need that?

All questioning your warning, your forewarning of what's gonna happen. I wanna have greater faith. God, I am ready. I want to be ready for what you say is already going to come. What you say is already here. What you say is already the danger zone. We're in a spiritual battle and we need to be able to withstand all that because Satan, he's going to use every wind of doctrine, the trickery of men, deceitful scheming.

People will entice you with both allurements and lies, just like they did Jesus. Why don't you say this? Just like they would do, are you hungry? Of course I'm hungry. I just fasted for work, right? Like, why don't you have this? You know, one of the things I was thinking about, Satan is going to push every underlying button.

Did God really say that? Why don't you exercise your strength? Shouldn't you deserve a little better? Why don't you have more? Shouldn't you have more? You know what I was thinking the other day? As I was preparing for this, I was thinking, Satan told the son of God, bow and I'll give you all of this.

To me, that's just kind of like hard to wrap my mind around. Like Satan knew this potentially could be the Messiah, but decided to attack him and say, let me give you all of this, right? And then you started thinking like, how would I, how would our modern 2020 young man react to all that?

Perhaps Satan saw me, caught me staring at the stuff that I want so badly. How many people window shop through their phones all day long? Some days I'm sitting there, I'm not even really interested in actually buying it, but I'm just like window shopping. Maybe some of you are like, aha, this is great.

'Cause I've been already collecting some of that. I've got a little collection of my own, but it'd be great if I could have a big collection. I wonder, we are in a generation where people love collection of this, collection of that. Look at this, I've got a showcase. What do you, if in your heart, you're starting to think, I need a bigger barn for my collection, right?

That's not me being extra harsh again, 'cause I feel the rebuke here. That's our Lord saying there was a man who was a fool 'cause he did not know what day or time his life would be a part of him. But he sat there building up his barn saying, I need a bigger barn and then a bigger barn and then a bigger barn.

Do not fall to that kind of temptation. We are all susceptible. The temptation and the schemes of the devil are so deceptive. And some of us may initially be like, that looks great. But remember, we have to exercise our strength, the mental battle, the spiritual battle, the heart battle, right?

It's not just all out there, it's right in here. And he says that. The struggle is not against flesh and blood. It's not that guy. It's not that girl. It's not that person out there, right? The struggle is not just simply physical. It's not just simply material. As though all you need to do is just, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm just gonna get rid of this thing.

As though that's gonna solve it, right? You know what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna add this piece to my life. He says, we are fighting against, and check this out, the observation we make is there are rulers and powers and world forces of darkness, spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenlies, in the heavenly places.

Do you believe that? To me, there was like this phase I went through, you know, where I was like, man, like this charismatic stuff where everybody's like, that's a demon and that's a demon and that's a demon. Like, I was really turned off by that because my parents went to a really charismatic church.

And then when I got saved, I was at a very charismatic church. So we saw a lot of this like, oh my gosh, everybody got together and let's cast this out, like that kind of stuff. That was my early, early first and second year of being a Christian. And then so there was a part of me that hated it.

And then you start reading scripture and you realize like, there are demons, you know? The scripture tells you like, there's so much more than meets the eye. And then I remember this one season when my wife was a teacher, she recognized that even amongst some of the students in high school, there are dark forces at play.

Suppressive, I mean, if you want to talk about oppression, right now there's so much talk about oppression. There are dark forces, even amongst the youth. I think this past Sunday, I described this horrible scenario where the number three killer of all children, 18 and down is suicide. There is a dark oppressive force that is lying, saying just die and kill yourself.

You have no other option. There's blinding the eyes to Christ, blinding the eyes to the hope, blinding eyes to the love of God and saying there's nothing for you. That's oppression. It's a dark force. And then I remember a long time ago when my wife was telling me that actually there was a student who was engaged in satanic worship and I didn't know what to think about it.

So I went to Pastor Peter and I was like, Pastor Peter, my wife was talking about the student who had demonic experiences. And Pastor Peter's like, oh, let me tell you the stories. And I was like, what? I was hoping, I was looking for encouragement that it wasn't existing or something like that, right?

I was hoping you'd say it didn't exist. And he's like, let me tell you the stories. The reason why I say that is because I do realize like, yeah, you can just turn your eye blindly to just think physically, but there are things happening that are far beyond just the physical.

And wow, we need to be praying then, shouldn't we? And what's more, are you able to tell the differences between the voice of God and the voice of Satan? Remember, the voice of Satan is going to sound beautiful. Remember the image of Satan in the Bible is not like the things and the horns.

You guys have heard this many times, right? The image of Satan is like humanly and physically glorious, like attractive, like beautiful to behold, like very, very alluring, right? And you think about that and there are so many things. Now, just to be funny, 'cause I just took this moment to jot down some things because I'm asking you this question right now, okay?

What are the mantras? What are the voices of this world that are purely more demonic, earthly fleshly? And again, there's so many things attacking us, okay? As opposed to things that are godly. You know what I hear a lot these days, mantras wise? Again, I heard some of you guys say it.

I'm not trying to pick on you. It's okay, I know what you mean. But in terms of the world, they say stuff like this. You know, you gotta do what makes you happy. No, you don't gotta. Who said you gotta? You know, you gotta do you. You be you, right?

Is that what the scripture says? No, no, that's satanic. Jesus says you gotta deny yourself. You got to kill that old man and you've gotta do what is pleasing to the Father and become more like Christ. Here's another one. Yolo, right? You only live once, which means to say, enjoy your small little time that you have because you're not gonna have any other time.

It sounds pretty good. But satanic. Every man is both destined to live only once, but he's going to face judgment for eternity. Every life is eternal. Every life is eternal. This whole philosophy of the world. You know, I remember thinking this one time. I can't remember, but there was this moment when I was very tempted to compromise on, like I was at this event and then I wanted to get some freebies.

And I remember like feeling really tempted to want freebies and then the part of me that just simply said, everyone's doing it. Okay. Do you realize everyone's doing it is pretty satanic too? I mean, and I think about that and I'm just like, Mark, you're so stupid, right? You're so easily duped by that little voice in your head that simply rationalizes your compromise and you just look around and say, but everybody's doing it.

As if that was the barometer for the Christian. I'm just talking about again, all the different deceptive. It's just so easy. So I hope I challenged you enough to say, we have to be steady, alert, prepared. Therefore put on the full armor of God. Point four. Therefore take up the full armor of God so that you will be able to resist in the evil day.

And having done everything to stand firm, stand firm therefore having girded your loins with truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Okay. So the command again is to repeat, you need to put on the armor of God.

Okay. Now what it did not say is you need to go kill Satan because that's Jesus's work. And I want to remind you again, there is this tension in the scriptures. It's like, get ready. You need to be prepared. Be sober. Come on, stay awake. Right. But then the other part of it is like victory is yours.

I just want to remind you of that. It did not say go and kill Satan. It says the victory is yours in Christ. You need to abide in him. Okay. Now in thinking about that, he gives you the armor of God starter pack. There's three pieces at the very beginning.

And then it says, and then also, and then it continues to more specific pieces. The three pieces are, gird your loins. Okay. You've got people have the tunic thingy. People have that long piece of cloth. You got to be ready and you got to make sure everything is tied in with the truth.

You've got no straggling pieces. The other day, I've got a big bruise right here because I had my earphones on. And then I had this like little rotary tool and it caught the earphone. I don't know why I didn't use a wireless one. Big mistake. The cable came out, swung out from my phone, slapped me in the hand, ripped my skin.

I have a fat bruise right here. Okay. That's why you don't let stuff hang loose. Okay. It's a great picture. Let the truth create those parameters for you. Truth by nature excludes falsehood and folly and foolishness. The more that you look at truth, the more the narrow your path will be straight to the Lord.

Okay. What's more? Having put on the breastplate of righteousness. Remember the prayer that we read in Philippians chapter one? Great, great prayer. Talking about your sincerity and your blamelessness. And as you walk with discernment, you're going to be filled with the righteousness. What's more? Having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.

Okay. Wow. Think about this. You know, when you think about the gospel, our atonement, reconciliation, our adoption, our redemption, our sanct... You know, like all of these are justification. All of these terms, you realize, like we could actually prepare and prepare and prepare and think and think and think to appreciate, but also hold fast to that truth in even greater ways.

Right? And my challenge to every single one of us is remember that the gospel is so simple and yet so profoundly deep. Yes? And you could take, if the gospel, I'm trying to imagine it. I mean, you could take the bird's eye perspective and just be wowed by like, the gospel was prepared from ages ago.

Right? And it's going to come to fruit. You can take the gospel and the specificity. It's like, look what the sacrifice he had to do. And you could take the angle of looking up. It's like, look at the perspective of the father. You could look down. You're like, oh my gosh, look how deep we were.

Right? Like you could look at the gospel in so many different angles and perspectives. And then you just realize, wow, how profoundly majestic is the mind of God and his love. And my question is like, have you, and the question here is like, are you prepared with that? Are you prepared with that?

Now I'm not going to go at length about every single piece because that's something for you to just think through. Am I being saturated with truth? Am I continuing to grow in acts of righteousness and discernment? That kind of thing. But one thing I do want to tell you is that notice the text is capitalized, which means in your Bible, this is a quotation from the old Testament.

This comes from Isaiah chapter five. No, no. I'm going to my notes here. Oh no, I didn't put it in my notes. I want to say, okay, it's from the book of Isaiah. I apologize about that. I want to say it's Isaiah 11 verse five. Okay. But what it's talking about, if I remember correctly, is I wish I put it in my notes.

What it's talking about is the nature of the root of Jesse and the branch, the righteous one who is to come. Okay. That passage was beautiful. So I was just like reflecting on it. It's talking about the Lord. This picture of strength is talking about our Lord. And remember the challenge is be strong in the Lord.

You do realize our Lord is the Lord of truth. He is the truth. He's the embodiment of the truth. He is the King of righteousness. He is the Prince of Peace. I mean, think about all this. You need to be strong in the Lord. And I think to me, it's always been such a incredible like source of not like, you got to do this.

Like he's not a drill sergeant that doing this. To me, it has always been such an incredible source of benefit and blessing to us when God wants us to be like his glorious son, Jesus Christ. There is such an incredible love of the father when he wants to build you up and change you and transform you into that image of the perfections of Christ, including his strength.

That's to me always astounding. It's awesome. I hope that even all the more than motivates you. And by way of conclusion, I really, really appreciate Paul's exhortation. That is kind of embedded into his statements here. That's saying, take up the full armor. Repeat it again. Take up the full armor.

Why? Because you need to be able to stand. You need to be able to stand. And then he says, having done everything to stand firm. And if you notice, I kept reading it funny. Like it was supposed to be like this, like run on sentence. Like the thought just flows.

And my point here is going to be, there has to be this mentality where Apostle Paul is saying, you're supposed to have done all of it. And that in and of itself is an incredible challenge because I think a lot of us, there is always, I don't know if it's a laziness, a comfort thing.

I don't know if it's us seeking shortcuts, wanting it to happen immediately. 'Cause we are definitely an immediate generation where it has to be microwavable. The idea here is, do you have the, I want to do everything mentality. And you realize, again, using the metaphor of the home defense, you realize it's not enough for you to have, let's say you're getting something even more than that.

Like I'm going to go to machete. Do you know where you're going to carry it? You're going to carry that on your body? Do you have a sheet? Do you know how to actually use it? It's like, I'm just going to jab. What are you going to do with it?

Did you have practice? Do you even know what kind to get? Do you know like what, like, you know, if that's going to endanger your own kids, like if you're going to be, you yourself are going to be the greater threat to your own children, if you're just wielding something that dangerous.

I mean, think about this. Once you get into the fight, you need all of it. And that's the exhortation I want to conclude with. Why? Because one of the things that I was meditating upon about myself, you know, there are so many things I want to do. And again, there's a balance.

Sometimes you could be super hard on yourself, but it's a point of conviction for me. I think that I have caught myself saying this many times when I know there are so many things that I should be doing, which is, I was thinking about it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That sounds good. I'm very agreeable. That's all good. I was thinking about it. But it was never already done, right? And I think that's one of the issues here with the priorities of God for us in preparation for the hard days to come. Every single one of you who've been Christian for more than 10 years, please know, you have probably been at one point on Satan's hit list.

Because if you've been faithful for this long, then he better make sure that he knocks you down, okay? And so many people say, should it be getting easier as you become like aged at the Christian, more mature as a Christian? No, it's probably gonna get harder. And our Lord is saying to us, make this a priority to get it done.

Put on the full armor of God. Be ready, amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for your love. We remember and recall, Lord Christ's love for his disciples as he was about to leave. We felt his angst. We felt his trouble. In the passion of his words, he desired to prepare his disciples for his departure.

And for us, Father God, you have told us, you did not leave us. You have already given to us the spirit. And you're reminding us that you have granted power in the name of Christ. And it is my prayer, Lord, that every believer experiences that power in their life starting now.

Not to think that that's only for a distant, distant future when you return, but that we need to be walking with you steadily, abiding in you now. Lord, right now, there's so many things in the day, like the distractions, but also the worries, the unrest, the divisions, and all these things are wearisome, grievous.

I pray, God, you'd grant to us sobriety of mind, of fortitude, Lord God, where our minds are saturated in your truth, to be able to prove, approve what is godly in your sight, so that, Lord, we would both be pleasing to you, but that we would also be able to endure.

Lord, we wanna thank you. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.